--> New licensing system contractors modernize the process of getting a security or special police license in DC.

Washington DC security and special police officers are benefiting from a change in the District's licensing process.

Starting in 2014, the Security Officer Management Branch (SOMB) of the Metropolitan Police Department handed off part of the licensing approval process to the District's Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA.) DCRA subsequently contracted out this work to a private company, Pearson VUE.

SOMB still makes the final decision as to whether or not a license will be granted; however, DCRA's contractor, Pearson VUE now performs much of the routine work of examining and pre-qualifying the applicant.

Freed from oversight of the routine matters, SOMB can now focus on the important task of investigating those applicants who have a criminal history before granting its final approval.

At first glance, this may appear to be a bad step for the applicant. Now, they must deal with double bureaucracy -- two government bureaus instead of one.

That concern notwithstanding, there appears to be a great improvement. Because they already have oversight over the licensing of numerous occupational groups, DCRA clearly brings a level of professionalism, modernization and expertise to the pre-qualification process that exceeds that of SOMB -- the primary of which is DCRA's good sense to privatize its functions with Pearson VUE.

Firstly, Pearson VUE provides security applicants with a wealth of online information. This allows the applicant to answer many of his questions before ever engaging with the District. There are more than 15,000 security and special police license holders in the District and Pearson VUE's online platform allows these individuals to answer their own questions through online research -- instead of consuming the time of a District employee.

Secondly, Pearson VUE appears to have modernized the security officer examination process. Officers can now pre-schedule their examinations online and applicants can study for the test using the publicly available examination guide.

There is still room for improvement.

The current system still requires the officer to interact with SOMB in a cumbersome two-step approach: first take the test and provide numerous documents to Pearson; then, provide additional documents and fingerprints to SOMB.

This could be mitigated.

The District could eliminate this by having Pearson collect all necessary documents and direct the applicant to the District's fingerprinting Live Scan locations. This would negate the need for the applicant to go through a two step applicant process and would likely speed up the application process because the applicant could submit his fingerprints before taking the Pearson examination.

That said, the District has made a good choice to privatize part of its process and DC security and special police personnel are the beneficiaries of this action.

JW Murphey

Murphey started a private security agency at the age of 19. He enjoys writing articles to assist those in the security industry with the licensing and training process. He can be contacted @JW.Murphey@securityofficerhq.com.

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